Bobbi smiled with no humor. Soon there was going to be only one sex in Haven. No mothers; no fathers. Just another Burma-Shave sign, you might say, on the Great Road of 'Becoming.'
She looked from Kyle to Dick to Newt to Hazel and saw that the others looked as shocked as she felt. Thank God she was not alone, then. Tommy and Hester had gotten back all right - ahead of schedule, actually, because when Tommy started to feel really ill only three hours after they had driven out of the Haven-Troy area, he had begun to push it, moving as fast as he could.
The damn kid was really a hero, Bobbi thought. I guess the best we can do for him is a plot in Homeland, but he was still a hero.
She looked toward where Hester lay, pallid as a wax cameo, breathing dryly, eyes closed. They could have - maybe should have - come back when they felt the headaches coming on, when their gums began to bleed, but they hadn't even discussed it. And it wasn't only their gums. Hester, who had been menstruating lightly all during the 'becoming' (unlike older women, teenage girls didn't ever seem to stop ... or hadn't yet, anyway), made Tommy stop at the Troy General Store so she could buy heavier sanitary napkins. She had begun to flow copiously. By the time they had bought three car batteries and a good used truck battery in the NewportDerry Town Line Auto Supply on Route 7, she had soaked four Stayfree Maxi-pads.
Their heads began to ache, Tommy's worse than Hester's. By the time they had gotten half a dozen Allstate batteries at the Sears store and well over a hundred C, D, and double- and triple-A cells at the Derry Tru-Value Hardware
(which had just gotten a new shipment in), they both knew they had to get back ... quick. Tommy had begun to hallucinate; as he drove up Wentworth Street, he thought he saw a clown grinning up at him from an open sewer manhole - a clown with shiny silver dollars for eyes and a clenched white glove filled with balloons.
Eight miles or so out of Derry, headed back toward Haven on Route 9, Tommy's rectum began to bleed.
He pulled over, and, face flaming with embarrassment, asked Hester if he could have some of her pads. He was able to explain why when she asked, but not to look at her while he did so. She gave him a handful and he went into the bushes for a minute. He came back to the car weaving like a drunk, one hand outstretched.
'You got to drive, Hester,' he said. 'I'm not seeing so hot.'
By the time they got back to the town line, the front seat of the car was splashed with gore and Tommy was unconscious. By then Hester herself was able to see only through a dark curtain; she knew it was four of a bright summer's afternoon, but Doc Warwick seemed to come to her out of a thundery purple twilight. She knew he was opening the door, touching her hands, saying It's all right, my darling, you are back, you can let go of the wheel now, you are back in Haven. She was able to give a more or less coherent account of their afternoon as she lay in the protective circle of Hazel McCready's arms, but she had joined Tommy in unconsciousness long before they got to the doc's, even though Doc was doing an unheard-of sixty-five, his white hair flying in the wind.
Adley McKeen whispered: What about the girl?
Well, her blood pressure's dropping, Warwick said. The bleeding's stopped. She is young and tough. Good country stock. I knew her parents and her grandparents. She'll pull through. He looked around at them grimly, his watery old blue eyes not deceived by their makeup, which in this light made them look like half a dozen ghastly suntanned clowns.
But I don't think she'll ever regain her sight.
There was a numb silence. Bobbi broke it:
That's not so.
Doc Warwick turned to look at her.
She'll see again, Bobbi said. When the 'becoming' is finished, she'll see. We'll all see with one eye then.
Warwick met her gaze for a moment, and then his own eyes dropped. Yes, he said. I guess. But it's a damned shame, anyway.